Back to May 18th, 1988, Mr. Cao Yu, the renowned playwright of China，gave to the crew of the Foreign Language Drama Society of Nankai University his inscription saying “Wish Thunderstorm in JapanesePerformed by the Department of Foreign Languages a Success”. This piece of inscription was kept by Chishang Zhengye and his wife Chishang Zhenzi, who worked then as the foreign teachers in the Department of Foreign Languages (now the College of Foreign Languages) of the NKU. Li Zhenxi is now the Japanese Alumni Working Group member of Foreign Language Alumni Society. With the assistance of Mr. Li to get in touch with them, Mr. and Mrs. Chishang preferred donating the inscription and the relevant materials of the performance, understanding and appreciating Nankai’s efforts to restore and develop the Foreign Language Drama Society, in a way that Institute of the Academia Historica could be allowed to keep them for good.
On January 17th, 2020, the ceremony for donating Mr. Cao Yu’s inscription was held in the Lizheng Hall of the CFL. The participants were President of the CFL Yan guodong, Vice-President and Deputy Secretary Xiang Yu, Deputy Secretary-general of Foreign Language Alumni Society Fan Xihe and Shi Wu, and the teacher and student representatives. On behalf Mr. and Mrs. Chiashang, Li Zhenxi came to donate the inscription. Vice President of the CFL Ma Hongqi was the host of the ceremony.
In the ceremony, Li Zhenxi donated the inscription and the relevant materials to the Institute of the Academia Historica, and in return Yan Guodong granted the commemorative badge and donation certificate.
Yan Guodong expressed his gratitude to Mr. and Mrs. Chishang for their great contribution to the performance of the crew in Japan and for keeping the precious materials for the CFL, which reflected their profound affections with Nankai University and the sincere people-to-people exchanges. He added that, as the author of Thunderstorm and the founding father of contemporary Chinese drama art, Cao Yu’s career of writing started from Nankai University; that his inscription was both a witness the splendors of the Foreign Language Drama Society and a motivation for students of the CFL to continue to grow and thrive; that while carrying forward the spirit of patriotism and the glorious tradition of the foreign language disciplines, our college should make progress in the talents training, faculty development, scientific researches, internalization, student affairs and social services.
Li Zhenxi stated that we were touched by their donation of Cao Yu’s inscription, the script, poster, schedule and letters of the performance to Institute of the Academia Historica; that as the foreign language alumni, he would follow their example to make contribution to the development of the first-class discipline and talents training.
In the end, a video filmed by Mr. and Mrs. Chishang was played to explain whereabouts of the donation. The whole audience at the hall is deeply moved by their appealing words.
Zhong Weifang, the 2020 PhD student majoring in the Japanese language and literature, said that she was proud of the performance acted by senior school mates; that when Mr. and Mrs. Chishang expressed that the inscription should be kept in the CFL and Nankai University, her eyes run over with tears; that the successful performance by the Foreign Language Drama Society should be seen as the honor of the CFL and an important occasion for the history of drama; that she was looking forward to the bright future of the Society to make further achievements.
In the 1980s, established by the Department of Foreign Languages of the NKU, “the Red Mill” Crew came to Japan to act publicly the Thunderstorm in Japanese throughout June 13th to 21st , 1988. This is the first-ever Chinese Opera in Japanese performed by the Chinese students in Japan. In 1986, Thunderstorm in English was performed at nine universities of Minnesota, America and Stanford University. In 1987, the performance of Rickshaw Boy in English was a success in ten universities of central America. Besides, operas performed in Russian were involved in the talents training. Nankai enjoys a long history of drama performing and a wonderful variety of representation forms, never seen in other high institutions of China.
In 2019, the College of Foreign Languages was designed to restore the foreign language drama society. A course The Foreign Language Drama, as the first batch of pilots, was taken by students majoring English, translation, Russian, Portuguese, Italian. Meanwhile, the public performance was added into the curriculum of practice course and funded by “Fisher Drama Foundation”, so as to make the foreign language drama performance exact, standard and professional. Against the backdrop of the Chinese culture “going global”, Nankai Foreign Language Drama Society will take the responsibility for achieving this purpose by way of drama performing.
